Key Corruption Witness and Three Others Discovered in Hotel Room

Available photos in this case are fairly limited due to its high profile nature in Ecuador, but I am posting what I have managed to obtain.

Rubén Cherres Straggioni, a wealthy oil tycoon with ties to the Albanian mafia as well as the Ecuadoran President Lasso was found tortured and executed with a bullet to the head in a resort villa in Punta Blanca on January 9, 2023. The resort villa was small and well below his usual means, which is why he hoped to use it to hide out for a couple of days without being noticed.

His girlfriend (a 28 year old minor 'Tik Tok celebrity') was lying dead next to him, showing signs of strangulation and dead from a single gunshot to the head. A friend and business associate of his was lying next to him, as well, also tortured and and shot.

His professional bodyguard was found tied up in the kitchen, half naked, strangled, severely beaten, and also shot in the head.

The target was allegedly cooperating in a corruption investigation regarding energy use and the current President's administration. But he apparently had his dirty fingers in several pies, including high level distribution of drugs for an Albanian organized crime family.

Rubén Cherres was involved in a net of corruption with Guillermo Lasso's government and potentially an Albanese drug trafficking ring. The direct links between the Albanese and the government are unproven, but what is known is that Cherres was the subject of previous investigations for involvement in drug trafficking, where it was found he had close ties to the Albanese businessman Dritan Gjika, with whom he shares ownership of dozens of shell companies that are very clearly used for money laundering; investigations were suddenly dropped in 2021.

What's also known, and probably more relevant to the murder case and the accusations of government corruption, is that Cherres offered government positions to people he considered "convenient". This was revealed months before his murder, through leaked audio files that also mentioned dealings with Lasso's brother-in-law, Danilo Carrera, who was in charge of public enterprises and was also Cherres's best friend.

It is not currently clear (and may never be) exactly which of his many enemies ordered this hit, but it was certainly a successful action.

Sidenote: The girlfriend's last TikTok is screenshotted here, where you can see she wears the same outfit she was killed in about two hours later. Authorities confirmed during the investigation that her last several TikTok streams contained inadvertent location identification information and were likely what led the assassins to their hideout.